Associations between migration and commuting to work in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo

Abstract

This paper investigates associations between migration and inter‐municipal commuting to work in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo with two main objectives: to determine whether a connection exists between long‐term relocation and daily travel and to determine whether this relationship is dependent on the distance of the migratory process. The empirical strategy is based on the estimation of univariate and bivariate probit models applied to microdata of the Brazilian Demographic Census of 2010. Different socio‐economic and demographic characteristics, such as sex, age, civil status, household arrangements and labour market features, were associated with both inter‐municipal commuting and migration. Moreover, associations between inter‐municipal commuting and migration depended on the distance of migration. It was observed that inter‐municipal commuting and intrametropolitan migration are complementary, whereas commuting and longer distance migration are substitutes.